links for 2011-07-22

“The one I want to tease right now is in-call advertising. The average length of a video call is going up — it’s about 27 minutes now — and you’re doing a lot of things in that time. If we’re talking, you’re not just looking at me, so we have a lot of opportunities there.”

Asked if that might involve ordering a pizza, for example, Bates responded: “Why not? Why not, because we have this intimate relationship, at the end of the call, I share an ad with you? Watch this space. We think this is going to be a very exciting area.”

For 20 days in June, July or August, every council is legally required to open up its draft accounts for the public to inspect. By law, this annual display has to be advertised in at least one newspaper circulating in your local area, at least 14 days before it’s due to start.

In the past, if you didn’t spot this notice in your paper it was pretty much tough luck, and a matter of waiting for September when the audited accounts were released (although some websites, including Richard Orange’s Orchard News Bureau, do track the dates).

Now, thanks to Eric Pickles, here’s a list of exactly when council accounts are available to read. There’s even a search engine so you can place your postcode and find the draft accounts page.

In general, the more ideological sites tended to be funded mostly or entirely by one parent organization-though that parent group may have various contributors. They tended to be less transparent about who they are and where their funding comes from. And they tended to produce less content-in some cases generating one or two stories per week produced by a single staffer.

In some ways, the Enterprise Fund seems like a spin-off of the News Challenge, but aimed specifically at supporting for-profit companies that are compatible with Knight’s mission. The Enterprise Fund, which was officially approved in December, will be investing $25,000 to $500,000 in individual companies — roughly the same scale as what most News Challenge winners received. And the News Challenge allowed for-profit companies to apply for grants. But the Enterprise Fund comes with the potential benefit of a return on investment — which, if all goes well, could have the cyclical effect of boosting more Knight projects.